Tonight, for the first time this season, the low temperature is forecast to reach zero F in Columbia. For many Americans, still focused on the Fahrenheit scale, this temperature marks a significant and worrisome barrier, below which we enter a perilous world.
While few would deny that zero degrees F is, indeed, cold, it is, in fact, just another unit above absolute zero, the theoretical point at which atomic movement comes to a halt. The latter sits near minus 460 degrees F; the lowest temperature ever recorded in nature (Antarctica) was minus 128 degrees F, while the highest (in Libya) was near 136 degrees F. Both the universal Celsius scale and the provincial (primarily U.S.) Fahrenheit scale are human devised measurements, based on differing units between the freezing and boiling points of water (0 and 100 degrees for Celsius, 32 and 212 degrees for Fahrenheit). Too often, TV meteorologists comment that it is twice as warm or twice as cold in one city than it is in another; while this may be true on the artificial human scale (e.g. 40 degrees F in Denver, 80 degrees F in Miami), the true measure of heat (above absolute zero) would be 500 vs. 540 Fahrenheit degrees.
So tomorrow morning, as we try to start the car at zero degrees F, we might feel better to know that it is actually 460 degrees above absolute zero!
